Word Origin & History

fable c.1300, from O.Fr. fable, from L. fabula "story, play, fable," lit. "that which is told," from fari "speak, tell," from PIE base *bha- "speak" (see fame). Sense of "animal story" comes from Aesop. In modern folklore terms, defined as "a short, comic tale making a moral point about human nature, usually through animal characters behaving in human ways." Most trace to Greece or India.

Example Sentences for fable

This fable is also given by Higden, who copies it from Macrobius.

Pearce did not, though he possibly had not read the fable of the lion and the mouse.

The fable teaches that one who has anything should be content with it, and avoid covetousness, lest he lose what he has.

They are bold before the fable, they are timid before the fact.

The scene in the house of the Archdeacon of Bangor is too exquisite for any one to desire it to be proved a fable.

In business, Joe—it's Esau's fable of the lion and the mouse every time!

Phdrus, living nearly nineteen hundred years ago, had a fable in his collection to illustrate this.

They fable of Clement that he had a cell in the middle of the sea.

Like the good-natured giant in the fable I allowed her to pull my beard, and as a consequence she presumed on my good-nature.